Dark Water Under the Bridge

by P. D. Workman

  “You want me to go with you?” Jones offered.

  “Uh, yes. But separate vehicles. If he bolts, I want to be able to stay on him. One of us.”

  Jones nodded. They both removed their sidearms from their lockboxes without comment and vested up. Who knew if he had an illegal weapon and would decide to do something stupid like holing up in his house and trying to shoot anyone who got too close?

  “You two be careful,” Cruz advised, even though it was obvious that they were taking the proper precautions.

  “We will,” Margie confirmed.

  “At the first sign of trouble, you call for help and fall back. Don’t push a confrontation.”

  She and Jones both nodded. Margie expected him to try to trade places with Jones to go along, but he didn’t.

  “Cover all exits. If it is an apartment building, call for backup.”

  “Yes.”

  Margie finished getting ready. She looked at him for any further advice. He just nodded. “Okay. You got this.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Margie’s heart was beating so fast as she drove to Warner’s address that it felt like it would burst right out of her chest. She didn’t feel like she had it covered by any stretch of the imagination. So many things could go wrong.

  But it could all go fine too. She might just be overreacting. Warner hadn’t uttered any threats when she had interviewed him previously. He hadn’t said or done anything that showed a propensity for violence. He hadn’t argued, called her names, insisted that they needed to drop everything else and get on top of his wife’s case. While there was an estrangement from Patty’s parents that he acknowledged was due to their not liking him, Mr. and Mrs. Roscoe had not suggested that they thought him capable of violence toward her or the children. She’d left the conversation wide open for them to make whatever claims they chose to. Warner had no domestic violence charges, no previous calls to the house over noise complaints or neighbor concerns. She hadn’t checked Children’s Services reports.

  They didn’t race to his house, but drove within the speed limits and didn’t use any lights or siren. No need to get him or anyone else wound up. When Margie pulled to the curb near the house, Jones pulled up beside her.

  “I’ll go around back. Just in case. Don’t stand in front of the door when you ring the bell.”

  Margie nodded. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll give you a couple of minutes to get situated.”

  She watched Jones drive around the block, and used the interim to scope out the street. There was no car in front of Warner’s house, and she couldn’t see a garage in the back. But there might have been a gravel pad for parking; she couldn’t be sure. Or the family might not even have two cars. Patty had to drive out to the park, and if Warner worked within the city or remotely, then he could bike or take the transit to work.

  She didn’t see anyone cross in front of the living room window while she was sitting there, but that didn’t mean anything. They could all be in different parts of the house, Warner working on something for his job, washing the floor, or making other plans. He might have additional evidence to get rid of or a girlfriend that Patty hadn’t known about.

  Margie startled when her phone buzzed. She took a quick glance at it. Jones was ready in the back. She closed her eyes briefly to center herself, then got out of the car and walked up to the house. Standing to the side of the door, she rang and then pounded on the door with her fist loudly enough that anyone in the house would be able to hear. She didn’t shout ‘police.’ That was mostly for cops on TV. She waited, listening for any sound from within or any movement in the window. Jones waited in back, quiet. No one trying to escape that way.

  Everything was quiet. No sound of breaking glass. No footsteps within. Margie allowed herself a glance toward the street where she had expected a car to be parked. Where was he? Where would he go with the two little girls? It wasn’t like he was taking them to the grandparents. He wouldn’t want them anywhere near the Roscoes. She didn’t know where his family was; he’d made no mention of them during their interview.

  She rang and knocked a couple more times. Sometimes, residents were in the basement or the shower, somewhere they couldn’t hear very well. Warner might have earphones on, listening to music as he cleaned. He could be gaming on his computer.

  Eventually, Margie walked around back to where Jones was waiting. “Looks like he’s out.”

  “Where do you think he is? Went out to get ice cream with the kids? Visiting family? Funeral home?”

  Any of those were possibilities, but none of them rang true. Margie shook her head. She looked around the back yard. There was a gravel pad for parking, but no car. So, if they had two vehicles, Warner had taken the second out.

  “We’ll need a motor vehicles search to find out what he’s driving.”

  Jones nodded. “Yeah. You going to put out an APB?”

  “Yes… but I’d like to figure out where he’s gone first. We should be able to figure this out.”

  “You don’t think that he’d put the kids in danger, do you?”

  “No. He doesn’t have any reason to harm them.”

  Or did he? What if he did have another girlfriend and she didn’t want kids? What if he’d never bonded with them in the first place and preferred to be on his own? What if the children were afraid of him and made him feel guilty whenever he looked at them?

  There were plenty of reasons that he might want them out of the way. He might want a fresh start.

  “I don’t think so,” she amended. “Warner didn’t say anything that made me think he might…”

  But the words sounded hollow in her own ears.

  Where would he go?

  If he didn’t like the Roscoes, and of course he didn’t, then he wouldn’t take the children to them. And he hadn’t taken them to the daycare.

  He was not used to being home alone with them for more than an hour or two while he waited for Patty to get home from her job each day. He would quickly find out that single fatherhood was no walk in the park.

  Margie’s brain caught on the phrase. No walk in the park.

  She didn’t think that he had taken them out for ice cream, but what about a walk in the park?

  She walked back around the front of the house, Jones trailing her and asking something Margie didn’t hear. She looked up and down the street. A neighborhood playground? No. He wouldn’t need the car then. Somewhere farther away. In her memory, she saw Patty Roscoe’s body in the water. She flashed on the children dipping minnows from the water from the little floating dock, their father standing back, watching them with unconcern.

  They could fall into the water. Even though it wasn’t deep and there was a lifesaver float right on the dock to be used if someone went into the water, something could still happen to them there.

  And if a father’s intentions were violent rather than just unconcerned that anything could happen to them…

  There was a certain symmetry in the children drowning where their mother’s body had been dumped—a way of giving them back to her.

  “They’ve gone to the park,” Margie told Jones. She was sure of it. She could feel it in her bones. “I’m going to head over there. We’ll need a warrant for the house in case I’m wrong. Can you get that moving?”

  “Yes, but I’m coming with you. You’re not going on your own.”

  Margie nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” She was probably right. That was just the kind of thing that a TV heroine would do—racing toward disaster, all by herself. No one to back her up.

  “Do you know where it is? Have you been there before?” she asked Jones.

  “Never been there before. But I studied the maps and the layout as part of the investigation. I can get out there.”

  “Okay. Just in case we get separated in traffic.”

  With a nod, the two of them separated to go back to their cars. Margie took one more look at the house for any sign that there was someone home, watching them through a window. But she didn’
t see any sign of life.

  She checked through her GPS destinations and brought up the one for the park again. She knew where it was, but she didn’t want to get it wrong. No wrong turns today.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Margie was impatient with the traffic lights on the way to the park, but she didn’t want to use her lights and siren. They didn’t know for sure that anyone’s life was in danger. It was only a gut feeling that Warner was taking the children to the park. Even if they found him there, they couldn’t assume that he had any intention to harm the children unless he took some action to indicate that he did. They would arrest him for his wife’s murder, but that was all they could do to start with. MacDonald had said to bring him in for questioning. Hopefully, before they got very far, they would have confirmation that it was his voice on the recording and that the time record on the video put it in the window of time of Patty’s death.

  As she got out to the highway, she could see Jones‘s vehicle behind her. They were going to get there. They were going to arrest Scott Warner. They were going to take the children to their grandparents.

  It would be a happy ending.

  Not for Patty, but for everyone else. Her killer would be brought to justice. Her family would be reunited. They would be safe.

  Margie couldn’t see Warner at the creek where Patty’s body had been dumped. She continued to drive around to the public parking lot but, rather than stopping, drove up over the sidewalk as close as she could to the education center, looking for Scott Warner’s figure with the two little girls. She only had a vague picture of the little girls in mind, built from the blurry video of Arabella. Warner hadn’t brought them with him the day he was interviewed. He hadn’t shown her any family pictures. He hadn’t wanted the police to have the opportunity to talk to the girls about what had happened to their mother.

  Maybe he knew that Arabella knew something. Maybe he knew only that the girls knew their mother had come home, that they hadn’t gone to bed waiting for her to return home.

  She got out of her car, looking around. People were walking around, enjoying the mild weather—many of them stopping to look at the two vehicles driving up on the sidewalk. The cars were not marked squad cars, so people were probably pretty confused as to why the two women would drive their cars right up to the education center. Until they saw the women’s vests and gun holsters. Then they’d have a pretty good idea.

  Margie led the way around the education center, ignoring the queasiness and the pain in her chest as she climbed onto the walkways to go around the building. She could have told Jones to go around that side and gone around the other side of the education center on solid ground herself. But she hadn’t been able to see Warner or the children in the playground on the other side of the education center. She had the little floating dock in her mind. That was where the children would be. That was what Scott Warner had in his mind. He would take them out there, show them how to dip their little nets into the water, and dump the contents into a bucket.

  He would wait until they were happy and distracted. And then he would strike.

  She could hardly breathe as she rushed along the walkway, up the stairs to the next level, and then out to the little bridge and pathway that would take them around the hill with the art installation and to the dock. Jones hurried behind her, asking questions that Margie couldn’t hear or answer. It took everything she could to get over the grille on the bridge to where she felt safe.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Warner was right where Margie had expected him to be. Standing on the floating dock with the two children kneeling in front of him, just like she had pictured. She had to blink her eyes a couple of times to clear them and make sure she wasn’t really seeing the homeschooler dad or another small family group. Was she only seeing what she had thought she would see?

  But Jones was swearing under her breath, hurrying along behind Margie.

  “I’ll fall back and flank him,” Jones suggested. “You engage with him, talk to him, get him distracted. Keep him looking in your direction as much as possible. I’ll get in behind him, closer to the children. We’ll try to cut him off from them.”

  Margie nodded. Her brain objected that it wouldn’t work, but she had to do what she could. Without a good plan of her own, she fell back on Detective Jones’s.

  “Mr. Warner,” she called out, projecting her voice. She had a tough, no-nonsense, don’t-mess-with-me cop voice. That, combined with a glare she had perfected as the mother of a teenager, was usually enough to get a suspect’s attention and make him think twice about what he was doing.

  He turned toward her, away from the two blond little girls with pails. Margie kept moving, walking on the path going past the dock, making him turn his body to keep facing her. His expression was one of shock. Eyes wide, skin pale, his mouth a slash of color that stood out in stark contrast to his skin.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded in an, aggrieved tone.

  “We were looking for you. You weren’t at your house, so I thought maybe you were here.”

  “What made you think I would be here?”

  She didn’t point out that since that was where his wife’s body had been dumped, it seemed a logical choice. She didn’t want to wind him up more, escalating the fear and anger he was already feeling. He felt vulnerable. He hadn’t expected them to know that he was there. He had thought he would be safe and anonymous. He could bide his time until just the right moment, when no one would see or understand what he was doing. He had counted on being unknown and able to choose his timing.

  “I’m glad we found you, Scott.” She used a warm tone and his name. Make him feel seen. Make him feel validated. Important. “This has been a tough week on you.”

  “You’re not kidding!” he agreed with a bark of laughter that was anything but amused.

  “How are you feeling? Is there anything we can do for you?”

  “Why are you here?” he asked again, shaking his head slightly.

  “We just want to make sure that everyone is taken care of.” She had planned to mention the girls, to ask him how they were doing, but she didn’t want him to focus on the girls again. She wanted him to stay looking at her, talking to her, while Jones slipped between him and the children.

  “You know.” His tone was flat. Certain.

  “What do we know?” Margie cocked her head as if she were curious. As if she didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “I had no idea. No way of knowing that she had given Arabella a phone.” He shook his head in irritation, but did not turn to look back at his daughters. “I knew she was playing with one, but I thought it was Patty’s old phone that didn’t work anymore.”

  “What did she do with the phone?”

  “Don’t mess with me! I know that you know. The minute I saw that email go out to Patty’s mother, I knew I was sunk.”

  Margie took a step closer to Warner, to keep his attention as much as to get close enough to do anything. Jones was staying quiet, trying to remain invisible and not to attract Warner’s attention with her movements.

  “How did you know about the email?” she asked Warner.

  “I monitored Patty’s email so that I would know if she was contacting her mother. Her friends. Trying to keep secrets from me. I would know if she was seeing someone behind my back.”

  Margie nodded slowly. “So you set something up so that you would be notified or copied any time she sent out an email.”

  “Of course I did. Anyone in my position would have done the same. I was protecting her. Protecting my family.”

  “Protecting them from what?”

  “That mother of hers hated me. Right from the start, for no reason at all. How is that fair? How do you start off hating the person your daughter is dating without even knowing anything about them? Nothing at all!”

  “That must have been hard for you.”

  “I was doing everything I could to keep us together. You don’t know what it was like. H
ow exhausting it was to keep on top of everything she was doing, to make sure that she was safe. That our family was safe from any outside forces. You have no idea how hard that is.”

  “No.” Margie took another step toward him. They were almost close enough for her to grab him now. Just a few more steps, reaching out quickly, and she would have him. She didn’t see a weapon, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one. If he were doing everything he could to protect his family, then she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he were carrying a knife or a gun. Or both. Gun violence was less common in Canada than it was in the States, but it wasn’t nonexistent. People still shot each other. With registered or unregistered weapons. Warner didn’t have a firearms license, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t acquired a gun somewhere.

  “What happened? What was it that drove a wedge between the two of you?” she asked with as much compassion as she could muster. “Was it just her mother? Or were there other things? Money? Other pressures?”

  “Her mother was a thorn in my side. She said that she wouldn’t have anything to do with Patty while the two of us were together, and it was tearing Patty up. I thought that as the girls got older, it wouldn’t be as much of an issue. She would establish a mother-daughter relationship with them, and her connection to her mother wouldn’t matter so much. But I think the opposite was true. The older the girls got, the more she wanted to make up with her mother. I told her she couldn’t. She couldn’t be the one to give in first. And the only thing her mother would be happy with was the two of us getting divorced.” He gave Margie a fierce look. “And we weren’t getting a divorce.”

  Not for anything. He would kill her first.

  Margie cast around for something else to ask him. But at that moment, he realized that Jones was there, working her way between them, cutting the children off from Warner.

  Making a noise like an enraged bull, he threw himself at Jones. She wasn’t expecting it, but she was well-trained and solidly built, and she absorbed the initial impact.